(calm music playing)
- I'm Shannon Teague, I'm the clinician
on the Veterans Mental Evaluation Team, VMET.
Back in 2000, joined in the United States Marine Corps.
I went on to continue working with
our homeless Veteran population here at the VA.
In 2018, the opportunity came along
for a new pilot program pairing a VA clinician
with a VA police officer.
- My name is Tyrone Anderson, I'm known as T-Bone.
I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1982.
I'm recently retired from the Long Beach Police Department
as a police officer, and that's when I decided to
come over to the VA and provide some service to my Veterans.
Hey sir, how are you doing?
My name is Officer Anderson with the VMET team.
You can call me T-Bone.
What's going on, buddy?
- [Shannon] We're with the VA.
(man yelling indistinctly on video)
Yeah, we're here to help you.
- [Man In Video] Did you ever serve?
- [T-Bone] Yes. - We did.
(man talking indistinctly)
- We're here for you, sir.
We're here for you.
The Veteran Mental Evaluation Team,
consists of Veterans working with other Veterans in crisis.
So we correspond to assist outside agencies with Veterans
and try to convince them to come back to the VA
for VA services versus going out
into the community for services.
- The MILO is a interactive training tool.
Because we're taking the clinical world
and the police world, it really helps on both ends
to be able to see how we interact with each other,
who is gonna take the lead during a call.
It's just a really great tool that we can use
(chat on radio) here on property to train.
- VMET one, go.
- [Man On Radio] Someone called the crisis line
and said that he was suicidal, requested assistance.
- 10-4 copy. 3-5 C.
Ready?
- [Shannon] We'll receive a call for service.
That might come from a local police department
or a provider here at the hospital
or even maybe the Veteran or a Veteran family.
I, on the clinician end, will look up some background information, what services
they may or may not be receiving,
and then my partner on the police side
will look into any criminal history,
previous encounters with law enforcement,
any of those safety issues.
From there, once we have a kind of better understanding,
we leave the property and we head out
to wherever the location of that person is in crisis.
- What's up, Larry?
- Should I put my hands up?
- You're looking good, man.
- Hey Larry, how are you doing today?
- I'm doing good today.
I'm doing good.
My name is Larry Nelson, I served from 1981 to 1986,
went places and did things that
people just get to read about.
I came home, I had living issues
where I was at with family,
and Shannon and T-Bone showed up at my door one day.
It took a while for us to mesh, okay?
It wasn't just, you know, we're happy campers right away.
But they told me who they were,
and that they were gonna help me out when it came to VA,
and they have.
Within two years, I got my own apartment,
I'm doing really good, actively fighting my cancer
instead of just letting it, giving up on it.
Just having a couple of Marines come and help
another Marine out has made their program good for me.
- In the first two and a half years of our program,
we've gone on over 2500 calls for service.
We've probably saved approximately 125 plus
Veteran lives that were at imminent risk for suicide.
- It's been a positive learning experience for me
to trust again and have them on my side,
in my court, to take care of me.
They've been where I've been, okay?
Once a Marine, always a Marine,
you know, we're brothers and sisters.
Semper Fi.
It's always painful, you know?
- For me, I'm just really thankful and grateful.
Now we're getting ready to work on
moving the program nationwide,
so it's just exciting to know that
something that was just an idea three years ago
is now going to be potentially saving Veterans
across the whole U.S.
So it's just amazing.